# "Dig a hole and put him in the hole"

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: ""Dig a hole and put him in the hole"," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/dig-a-hole-and-put-him-in-the-hole/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The classified CIA cable John Kiriakou has repeatedly cited as the one that convinced him the torture programme had crossed into murder, a field station reporting that interrogators had killed a detainee during a session and asking headquarters what to do, and a Base-office cable answering *"Dig a hole and put him in the hole."* Kiriakou frames it as the moment the answer to *"nobody ever gave the CIA permission to torture people to death"* stopped being a hypothetical.*

- **Source (per Kiriakou):** A [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia) cable he saw during the torture programme
- **Field report:** Interrogators had killed a detainee during questioning; the field station asked headquarters what to do
- **Reply from the Base office:** *"Dig a hole and put him in the hole"*
- **Kiriakou's framing:** *"Nobody ever gave the [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia) permission to torture people to death. And we just dig a hole and pretend the guy never existed?"*
- **Prosecutions of the officers involved:** None

**"Dig a hole and put him in the hole"** is the classified CIA cable [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) has cited across years of interviews as the one that convinced him the American torture programme had crossed into murder. It sits, in his account, alongside the wider question no one at the agency ever answered, *"how's that legal? Nobody ever gave the CIA permission to torture people to death."*

## The cable

Kiriakou describes seeing the exchange during the torture programme's active phase. *"I remember seeing a cable, it was the first time I'd seen a cable like this, where the so-called interrogators went too far, which we all predicted they would. And they murdered a prisoner during the interrogation and said, 'What do we do?' And then the base office wrote back and said, 'Just dig a hole and put him in the hole.'"*[1][2]

## The framing

Kiriakou treats the cable as the end of any hypothetical defense of the programme. *"Nobody ever gave the CIA permission to torture people to death. And we just dig a hole and pretend the guy never existed? But none of those people were ever prosecuted."*[2]

He pairs it with the sequence he uses to describe the shape of accountability at the [CIA](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/cia): the officer who exposed the programme went to prison; the officers who ran it *"all got away."* Speaking to Ben Kaplan on *To My Sons and Daughters*, he named the ones who appear on video in the Spy Museum's torture-programme exhibit, [Jose Rodriguez](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/jose-rodriguez), [James Mitchell](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/james-mitchell), and [Bruce Jessen](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/bruce-jessen), as the ones who *"all got away."*[3][4][1]

## See also

- [Enhanced interrogation](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/enhanced-interrogation)
- [Mitchell and Jessen](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mitchell-and-jessen)
- [Jose Rodriguez](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/jose-rodriguez)

## Sources

1. Truth, Betrayal & The Cost Of Speaking Out Ft. John Kiriakou | EP 6 (2026-07-28), at 05:09. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJVUqlEZ2zQ&t=309s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-07-28-to-my-sons-and-daughters-truth-betrayal-and-the-cost-of-speaking-out/
2. Truth, Betrayal & The Cost Of Speaking Out Ft. John Kiriakou | EP 6 (2026-07-28), at 05:40. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJVUqlEZ2zQ&t=340s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-07-28-to-my-sons-and-daughters-truth-betrayal-and-the-cost-of-speaking-out/
3. Truth, Betrayal & The Cost Of Speaking Out Ft. John Kiriakou | EP 6 (2026-07-28), at 04:08. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJVUqlEZ2zQ&t=248s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-07-28-to-my-sons-and-daughters-truth-betrayal-and-the-cost-of-speaking-out/
4. Truth, Betrayal & The Cost Of Speaking Out Ft. John Kiriakou | EP 6 (2026-07-28), at 04:39. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJVUqlEZ2zQ&t=279s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-07-28-to-my-sons-and-daughters-truth-betrayal-and-the-cost-of-speaking-out/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/dig-a-hole-and-put-him-in-the-hole/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt